A Tale Of Two Latino Areas In Miami And San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://marketurbanism.com/2015/04/20/travel-update-a-tale-of-two-latino-areas-in-miami-and-san-francisco/ <comment><USER2> I'm an immigrant myself and not very familiar with the problem: if gentrification good or bad?

The reason I'm asking is that, to the best of my knowledge, there was a period of "white flight", when urban core was basically left to poor people (or at least that's how I interpret this). My understanding is that at the time that was bad. Now rich people "move back in" and I get a vibe from similar articles that this is also bad. So, which is it?

<comment><USER3> A quick read: [http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21644164-gentrif...](http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21644164-gentrification-good-poor-bring-hipsters)

" _The case against it is simple. Newcomers with more money supposedly crowd out older residents. (...) Young, mostly white singletons have crowded into a district once built for families. (...)

Yet there is little evidence that gentrification is responsible for displacing the poor or minorities. Black people were moving out of Washington in the 1980s, long before most parts of the city began gentrifying. In cities like Detroit, where gentrifiers are few and far between and housing costs almost nothing, they are still leaving. (...) They did find, however, that the average income of black people with high- school diplomas in gentrifying areas soared. (...)

Gentrifiers can make life better for locals in plenty of ways (...) When professionals move to an area, "they know how to get things done". They put pressure on schools, the police and the city to improve. As property prices increase, rents go up—but that also generates more property-tax revenue, helping to improve local services. In many cities, zoning laws force developers to build subsidised housing for the poor as well as pricey pads for well-off newcomers, which means that rising house prices can help to create more subsidised housing, not less._"

Also, I think it is very funny how most of the criticism of gentrification is done by the white-liberal types and it reeks of classism. The original article says "It's not unusual to find live chickens running through people's backyards" like it is a good thing. I can almost read an implicit defense of segregation.

<comment><USER4> I live in a lower income neighbourhood in the east bay, because prices have risen so fast, and I'm so new, that that's all I can afford.

I've on several occasions been accused of gentrification, sometimes even by close friends or coworkers. But all I can think of is the fact that most of these coworkers are either under rent control, paying less than half I do for a comparable place (and come the fuck on, you work in tech, you don't _need_ rent control), and the other half live in luxury high rises.

I'm a foreigner, I don't always understand race relations. I thought segregation was bad. But apparently my friends self-segregate, and when I dare to live in 'their' neighbourhood, _I 'm_ the bad guy.

Life's a lot better when you think of other people as human beings, instead of a weird separate group to be left alone, don't you think?

<comment><USER5> Part of the problem is that most people who want to talk about *isms of any kind are not capable of thinking in terms other than binary. In this particular case, you're either the person who is moving in or the person who is moving out, with no consideration given to the large real-estate speculation firm that built the new high-rise condo projects that don't fit the neighborhood, on land probably acquired through some sort of government sale process and/or at least partially funded by grant money.

It's the ol' "searching in the street for the keys you lost in the yard because the streetlight is the only light you have."

Everyone wants an affordable place to live. It takes the power of government to wrench that land out from under people without fair compensation and pass it over at below-market rates to big-business to be redeveloped and resold at higher costs to ultimately increase property and income tax revenue.

<comment><USER6> I mostly hear feminists and anti-racism/anti-oppression activists argue very much the opposite. Your job is to progress toward being less racist and less sexist. It's about rejecting the view that people are intentionally racist or good people, but rather that we all have countless implicit biases and a system that promotes inequality, and we have to actively move toward _less_ bias.

The idea that some of us just _aren 't_ racist/sexist/classist/etc. is very much what is being argued against by "most people who want to talk about *isms".

Obviously, I can't provide a full survey of all thought on this matter, but here's the most recent racism article I've read: [http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/white_americas_racial_illite...](http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/white_americas_racial_illiteracy_why_our_national_conversation_is_poisoned_from_the_start_partner/)

I think it does a decent idea of expressing that it's not a binary.

<comment><USER5> I just think the binary approach is an incredibly naive, fruitless way of looking at an issue, one that suggests that resolution isn't the goal, but rather the clash between ideologies themselves is.

When you treat the negative spaces of non-activity as equally evil to the positive spaces of activity, you shove people who are straddling the middle _away_ from your side and towards your opposition. That keeps the middle ground right where it has always been, and nothing ever gets better. Mechanically, that's just incredibly stupid.

What's the message of this Salon article? "White people, you're always going to be a part of the problem, and nothing you can do will be considered part of the solution, because your desire to be involved is part of the problem. You are always wrong." Do articles like this make it more or less likely to convert people who _have_ started to think about it? To me, "you're always going to be wrong" is just driving people away. It is too easy to turn that into "then why even try?"

If that's _not_ the message, then someone in one of the sociology departments of universities across America needs to come up with a much better way of talking about the issue, because that's how I and a lot of people take it.

Outside of the recent spat of police shootings, the white-privilege topic is the only one I've personally been seeing coming out of academic circles and into the public. I guess that's part of my privilege that I get to live in a world not surrounded by concern about race. But I'm not a social worker or community organizer or politician or sociologist. I'm a software engineer. I'm busy making a living for myself. That doesn't make me a part of the problem _or_ the solution. That just makes me a person. I'm not asking to be held up and congratulated for not being actively racist. I'm just asking to also not be vilified for keeping my nose in my own business.

That's my point of the issue not being binary. "You're either for us or against us" is a totalitarian rhetoric, one that is not compatible with healthy democracies (though I belabor under no illusion that we live in a healthy democracy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok I'll bite. I live in Miami, go to San FranCisco often. Many of the historically ethnic neighborhoods in Miami are gentrifying. Wynwood the arts district was a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood. Design District which is filled with Prada stores was a historically poor black neighborhood. Overtown is quickly getting encroached by high rise developers because of its proximity to downtown (which is now also getting revitalized).

Little havana is actually getting new construction, but slowly. Little Havana has trailed mostly because the existing housing stock there is all older low slung multi unit housing, and the core of it lacks public transportation. Many of the core Little Havana buildings are technically historically protected, so that limits developers building there. We are seeing mid-rises go up in the area though.

San Francisco is seeing gentrification faster because of market forces dictating that if the money can't go vertical it has to go horizontal and displace the lower-income areas historical residents. SF will need to do something about affordable housing stock soon. Though that gives oakland a huge opportunity to seize that opportunity if they want it.

Last comment: San Francisco "warm" ??? really? maybe Millbrae, but not SF proper.

<comment><USER8> I had a 10 hour layover in Miami on my way back to Argentina. I walked through Little Havana and it was awesome. Almost everyone speaks Spanish, and there were even a few who didn't speak English, but had probably lived there for decades. (To me this is a plus, not a minus). I asked a guy at the bus stop which bus went back to the airport. "¿Cómo?", he replied? Even at mainstream businesses like Chase Bank, they greet you in Spanish unless you are clearly gringo (as I am).

<comment><USER9> This shows you how much cultural acceptance the US has to offer. For example, if you go to France and try to speak English, you will get scoffed at.

<comment><USER10> I think it depends where you are and how much of an effort you make, how friendly you are. I speak French fluently and even in Paris (where people have a reputation for being gallophillic and anglophobic in the extreme) I've had lovely conversations in English, both with locals and with visitors from other parts of the country.

I've also seen people "close ranks" when confronted by the "ugly American" who speaks not a word of French and shouts to make themselves understood. I've even joined those ranks until the person became far too annoying, at which point I offered a brusque and factual, pithy translation, delivered as if talking to a spoiled child.

It felt quite good. I'm not proud of that, but it did.

My experience in Paris is consistent with all of my travels: Make an effort, be interested, be nice, get warmth and welcome in return. Be a douche, get douched right back.

<comment><USER11> > My experience in Paris is consistent with all of my travels: Make an effort, > be interested, be nice, get warmth and welcome in return.

Same here, as an American who never studied French, aside from the French-for- tourists booklet once I was in Paris (which I _did_ try hard to learn).

People were delightful; I did not experience any of the negative stereotype when struggling to communicate with people, whether they spoke English or only French.

Same in several other countries, too, but Paris is particularly noteworthy considering the common (and ancient) slanders on that topic.

People have suggested that Parisians are more prejudiced against French dialects than they are against non-speakers, but I wouldn't know.

I do know that presumably-ugly Americans complained about Paris/Parisians, when I found it/them fantastic.

(I'm looking at your post history out of curiosity, excuse' moi (spell?))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Miami officials allowed them a place to go: Brickell. But in the 1970s, it > began attracting small banks, and in the decades since has boomed into the > "Wall Street of Miami."

The reason why Miami has "avoided gentrification" is multifaceted and complex. But it wasn't due to some top-down city planning, I can assure you.

Painting the "history of Brickell" as some sort of strategy to avoid gentrification is comically false. Brickell and those small banks therein were largely built with laundered drug money. The -- mostly commercial & real estate focused -- banking sector in Miami is not what the author would have you picture. While the cocaine cowboy days are long over, Miami feels less like a mini-wall street and more like a sofa to shove money under if you happen to live in a less stable nation; and the investment capital flow in this city represents that.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, Miami Native here. (Live in Bay Area Now) This article comes to the conclusion it was looking for that is in fact false and not rooted in reality. Brownsville/Overtown/Liberty city were not intentionally left as rundown ganglands there have been attempts to clean them up but all have failed. Also Little Hati is downright dangerous to enter. [1] And of course Little Havana is still Cuban, it's well maintained generally safe and all that the Cubans who had to leave their country have left (Besides Hialeah). Also Lets not forget that ~70% of Miami is Cuban and they really value their heritage (my wife is Cuban)

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqdObNwHyFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqdObNwHyFI)

<comment><USER7> The dominance of Cubans as part of the demographic is quickly slipping. So many more argentines, venezuelans, colombians, nicaraguans, and brazilians are here now. Agreed that brownsville/overtown/liberty city are all still dangerous. Wynwood was dangerous 5-6 years ago!

<comment><USER13> The Venezuelans took over Weston. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To be clear, there are hundreds of towns in the USA that are doing the opposite of gentrifying.

Go visit Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Go visit Danville, Virginia.

Go visit Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Go visit Harrison, Arkansas.

Go visit Atlanta, Georgia. *

There are hundreds of towns that have lost all the industrial and agricultural jobs they once had, and the people have sunk into deep poverty. Many of these areas now face an epidemic of meth, which seems to be how people in these regions deal with the hopelessness they feel, now that the jobs are gone.

*I mention, Atlanta, which is a large region. There are, of course, many areas of Atlanta that are gentrifying, but if you travel around the city at all, you also find huge neighborhoods that have sunk deeper into desperation. I am old enough that I can remember how affluent Atlanta was in the 90s, and I can remember how crime-ridden New York City used to be. The reversal of fortune is really remarkable. Nowadays I feel safe on New York subways, even late at night, whereas I no longer feel safe on Atlanta rail lines, even during the day (depending on the line).

<comment><USER15> Do you have any stats to backup your feelings? I feel safe riding MARTA at all hours. (I live a block from Five Points and do not own a car.)

<comment><USER16> It seems like the stats contradict his feelings (at least at a city-wide level).

[http://www.decaturish.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/1375-Re...](http://www.decaturish.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/1375-Report_2013_Final_Print_File_reduced_file.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe it's just the Chicagoan in me but when I hear "The wrong kind of people were going to move into the neighborhood but we put a stop to that!" I do not think "Sweet! Let us eat traditional food and play traditional music to celebrate this victory for justice."

<comment><USER18> Yes, I've noticed there's a distinct racist element to the anti-gentrification movement.

Hell, look at how the article treats ethnic segregation as something that should be celebrated. Disgusting.

<comment><USER19> Yes minority cultures have no place in America. Cheesecake Factory and McDonalds is our Melting Pot

<comment><USER20> There's a chain restaurant called The Melting Pot, so I'd say that's our melting pot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's all about money -- if San Francisco suddenly started allowing a lot of new high-rise residential developments to go up, it would cause existing property values to decline (because there would be more options). This would cause a lot of people who own property to lose money, so even the new, wealthy owners in gentrifying areas have an interest in preventing new development from happening.

I'm not saying that this is the right thing to do -- only that there is a reason people resist new development when pricing is based on a limited supply of housing in desirable areas.

<comment><USER22> It's a bit more complicated. If they allowed building more, property values wouldn't necessarily go down because more people would simply move to the city from other parts of the country, keeping both demand and property values high. One thing that would definitely happen is the character of SF would change a lot, more so than it already is. Perhaps, that's the right thing to do, but I can understand people who live there and are not looking forward to their city looking like Singapore/Chicago/Generic Skyscraper filled city

<comment><USER21> But that's the thing; the character of the city is going to change no matter what because people with money are going to come in and buy out existing residents anyway. So it's already going to be a bunch of rich yuppies and there's nothing anyone can do about that -- but what's happening is the lack of housing in SF causes prices to rise in surrounding areas as well, which prices lower-income folks out of the market and forces them to move further and further from the city.

If you want to preserve the character of the neighborhoods, you need dense residential areas that allow high-rise condos - it prevents the rich techies from going out and buying a row home for $1.3 million because they can get a sweet, brand-new condo for the same price in a better area. This keeps long- time residents in their homes, thus helping to preserve the culture of the neighborhoods.

The entire NIMBY movement can be boiled down to "Yes, we all agree these things need to be built. But I don't want them being built near me because they would cause my property value to decrease." It's a textbook case of the tragedy of the commons.

<comment><USER23> >The entire NIMBY movement can be boiled down to "Yes, we all agree these things need to be built. But I don't want them being built near me because they would cause my property value to decrease."

What evidence can you offer in support of this claim with respect to San Francisco specifically?

Because I can certainly see situations in which citizen objections to building projects would be perfectly warranted even without regard to property values: if a builder wanted to raze a block at the corner of 19th and Dolores and build a 50-story residential tower in its place, for example.

<comment><USER24> As evidence I present the highest housing prices in the country, the relatively low population density of San Francisco, and the city's notorious reputation for particularly onerous approval requirements before construction can go forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Gentrification is a Mytyh - [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/the_gentrification_myth_it_s_rare_and_not_as_bad_for_the_poor_as_people.html)

My city Allentown, PA has a very late white flight that occurred in the 80s and 90s. We had a donut economy where the suburbs had all the money and shopping and downtown was a rust belt city that had mostly mutli-family converted homes with low-income.

We now have over $1,000,000,000 invested into Downtown Allentown. [http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/american- futures/a...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/american- futures/allentown-bets-big-shed-its-former-image)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/breathin...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/breathing- life-into-allentown-pennsylvania-comes-to-the-rescue/379742/)

Protesters claim of gentrification is happening. My stance is center city Allentown is not where we dump low income people and for people to have a "better life" they must move to the suburbs. You can have a "better life" and live in our cities. Our schools have an almost 50% transfer rate for children. This means that 50% of the children that started in September will finish their school year at a different school.

I will take diversity over homogeneous non-gentrification. This word is to ambiguous and and not clear in telling anything.

</comment><comment><USER26> That left me wondering if the author, Scott Beyer, works for some developer PR firm. All leading up to this call to action:

 _All this, of course, suggests an ironic aspect of urban housing markets that is misunderstood by most government officials and NIMBYs: "if a city wants to preserve, it must build."_

Which I heard as "Hey San Francisco, let Simon Property Group develop this area into a techie zone, we'll make money and it will take pressure off the other neighborhoods because we'll be the cool place to be!"

<comment><USER27> Follow Scott Beyer's byline to his blog to his about page:

"My book will argue that cities should instead embrace "Market Urbanism." This phrase was invented in 2007 by Adam Hengels, a development consultant who founded the Market Urbanism blog [where the OP appeared]. He defines it as the intersection between capitalists and urbanists, and his contributors describe how municipal governments repeatedly harm economic productivity. My book will package his ideology into a series of proposals..."

So it seems like he's taken a development consultant as his role model and is fitting his observations into an already-decided ideology and action plan. That's why the article seems so one-dimensional and ignores obvious facts.

<comment><USER28> Want somewhere to live? Let people build housing. Pretty simple.

<comment><USER27> I don't disagree with all of his conclusions. But I think that his piece was so glib as to be meaningless.

He essentially promises that, by lifting building restrictions, you can preserve ethnic neighborhoods from gentrification (for what that's worth), because development will be channeled elsewhere, e.g. into high-rises that the professional class (in his reading) favors.

Just writing it down exposes how facile this is.

And that doesn't even get into other problems, like the unguarded analogies between San Francisco and Miami ("warm-weather cities").

Here's an article that I enjoyed, which also reached a pro-development conclusion, but with a lot more nuance: [http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2014/06/living-in-a-fools- para...](http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2014/06/living-in-a-fools-paradise/). This appeared in a special issue devoted to the SF housing situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> tl;dr from a former Miamian:

1\. There are virtually no tech jobs to bring people into the city. 2. Public transit is terrible. 3. Lack of white-friendly english-speaking small businesses. 4. Crime. 5. Cost of living is not low enough to negate the above points.

There are other things to consider, like the climate of Miami is not even remotely as mild as SF, the people are fairly horrible, there are no large tech employers, there's nothing attractive to average people about the area (South Florida is kind of a shit hole in general).

Basically, any place in Miami a tech hipster would move is simply too expensive without giving them anything they would enjoy in return. Even Wynwood quickly gets tiring for non-artist non-musician hipsters.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm a native of Miami and I think the article is right. The joke here is that Calle Ocho will be part of Brickell in 20 years - Brickell is creeping south.

Personally, as much as I like San Francisco I prefer Miami's slow road to gentrification. It seems accidental, but it's a model other cities could use. Create your Brickell and leave the rest alone.

</comment><comment><USER31> The title of the article has been heavily editorialized.

The correct title is: _Travel Update: A Tale Of Two Latino Areas In Miami And San Francisco_.

</comment><comment><USER32> The writer has no clue about SF, and yet pontificates as if he knows something.

Mission (in SF) was not historically a Latino neighborhood; it was originally Irish.

He picks 1 example (8 Washington) and proceeds to paint the entire city with it. Did he not bother to look a little south at SoMa, with its tall buildings?

I stopped reading at this point.

<comment><USER33> Very true. Also, the area around the ballpark was empty piers and parking lots in the 90s and has already been built up incredibly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the author misses the point. Miami can fit the rich people all in one neighborhood because there aren't so many of them. San Francisco is sitting on an enormous bed of prosperity, and has little cheap land around it. There's not enough room for all the rich people, let alone everyone else. You can't just say, "Toss them in the Marina." (Of as some might prefer, "Toss them off...")

I wish there was an easy answer, because none of the surrounding areas wants to locally address low income housing. My hunch is this needs to be handled on a State level to avoid the NIMBY syndrome. I don't think rent control or shaking down new developers to include a few below-market rooms solves much in the face of such an overwhelming supply and demand imbalance.

<comment><USER35> I love in Miami; there are A LOT of rich people here. These people are actually rich too, as in 6 figure salaries are what they consider just well off. The majority of them are ultra wealthy Latin Americans or Europeans who live here part of the time and maybe have their kids go to high school here where they basically live on their own in huge apartments.

The sad thing is there is actually shortage in housing and the rents are getting extremely high while wages are absolute shit. It doesn't help that every new apartment complex that gets built are marketed as "luxury" apartments for the ultra rich. There are two separate markets for renters here. When you can build ultra luxury appartments and rent them for $5000 - $10000 a month, there is no reason to construct more lower to middle class housing.

<comment><USER34> The foreign money was a problem in NYC too. Lots of new buildings with empty apartments owned by international buyers. I like to view myself as a capitalist, but this seems like a break-down of the system. I'm not sure if the problem is regulatory overhead making low-cost housing impossible to build, or what, but it does cause resentment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've been living in Miami for about 8 years. I love Miami :) but,

Miami is great but the city overall still depends on the car culture.

Population Density + Car Culture is never good.

The moment people are too lazy that they have to drive one block to get groceries; now thats a problem.

Yea, the Brickell is great and all but I would never live there unless I worked there.

The area has allowed other areas to stay "ethnic" with the expense of poor planning, for me getting in and out of Brickell is a odyssey and I only live 2 miles away.

I can't image what it is for someone who commutes there every day.

Miami lacks the public transportation other cities have developed.

Unless the public transportations keeps up, Miami will just be a vacation home for the rich not the "hub of the Americas" as it is always dubbed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Development (and lack thereof) is all about how much power the NIMBYs have to stop it. In SF that power seems to be almost absolute in many areas.

</comment><comment><USER38> While I generally agree with the overarching argument, it also ignores the fact that a SF "tech ghetto" would not be the same as a Miami "banker ghetto". Tech is compromised of mostly liberals, and many of those liberals wants neighborhoods with a sense of culture. They are not people who want to be siloed away in their ivory towers and gated communities. They might want new construction, but they also want new construction next to Duboce or Mission Dolores. New construction don't tend to build those kinds of community amenities. Mission Bay is experiencing a construction boom, but if given a choice, almost everyone I know would rather live in the older areas because Mission Bay is sterile.

</comment><comment><USER39> The article points out that Miami and San Francisco both have Latino populations, as if it were some reason why they should remain similar cities. But in fact, Miami's Latinos are not similar at all to San Francisco's. San Francisco is made up of about 15% Mexicans, where Miami has a majority of Cubans along with other Central Americans, and about half of the population is Hispanic. _All_ of Miami is Hispanic, and really only the Mission is in San Francisco. Miami is also missing the large Asian population.

Don't forget that San Francisco is 550 miles away from the USA/Mexico border. Miami is on the coast and is a much easier destination for new immigrants.

SF's population is also about double that of Miami.

<comment><USER40> The mission isn't even historically Hispanic. So it doesn't have the flavor as might the Mexican neighborhoods in san jose. The mission has been one of the historical destination neighborhoods for new immigrants who settle in SF. So the mission does not have a stereotypical ethnic look and feel.

The one thing can be said about the mission is that along with old Chinatown and excelsior they are the immigrant neighborhoods, but the characteristics of the immigrants to these neighborhoods have changed over time and only old Chinatown has held on to its ethnic look and feel, but looking at it through that lens is unhelpful. If we look at Beijing of today, it has not retained the look of the hutongs. Cities change. That said, The new immigrants to these neighborhoods are now not foreign but urban domestic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The author's point is that if cities aren't careful about planning, then they will lose having chickens running through people's backyards? Does it make me some kind of Downton Abbey snob to question just what kind of "loss" that is?

</comment><comment><USER42> There's a very, very simple answer to this.

Miami, with an average elevation of 6 feet above sea level, will be underwater in the next several decades. Storm surges already threaten the keys and the coastal lagoon, and this pattern is only worsening as drainage on the mainland is impacted by industry and global climate patterns cause more energetic storms, and average sea level rise.

SF, with an average of ~90ft will be much safer from this particular threat - although California will at the current rate, without serious intervention, be desert, on similar timescales.

Long term investment does not make sense when you are faced with a risk of it all ending up in the sea.

<comment><USER43> I agree that Miami will be underwater eventually. As for it being a reason for anything, I completely disagree. On your logic, nobody would be in SF because the next "big one" is coming. People generally dont give a shit.

<comment><USER42> There's a difference between earthquake risk, which is more of the "one large, recoverable, event" ilk, and the sea eating the land, which is pretty hard to come back from, particularly when you've built everything on porous limestone and sand. Dig a hole pretty much anywhere in Florida and you can watch the tide in it.

"People" generally don't, but property developers do.

It's also not "eventually", it's "imminently". You don't need the entire city to be underwater for it to be uninhabitable - you just need the sewer system to be below sea level, and you are quite literally up shit creek.

<comment><USER43> I believe you need to rethink what the word 'imminently' means. The most aggressive timescale out there from the National Climate Assessment suggests a 4 foot rise during the next one hundred years. If that started today, its less than a half inch a year. Thats hardly imminent. Thats not even in your lifetime you see the 3 foot mark.

<comment><USER42> A century is imminent as it is, unless you think only in single-life timescales, and a two foot rise will be enough to make Miami economically unviable - as above, sewerage - and fresh water - will be severely impinged by a moderate rise.

That's 50 years, even with current models. If Miami is to survive, it needs new infrastructure, now - and even that will only hold for the short term. The only long term option would be a massive caisson building effort, building a huge concrete sheet wall around the city, buried deep into the strata, down to below the porous limestone it's built atop - at least 20 feet deep in most places. Even then, you'll have issues with sinkholes due to water being removed from the strata... in short, abandonment is where Miami will end up. Nothing else makes sense.

Sea level rise is accelerating beyond our most aggressive models currently, due to ice shelf collapse - Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves are vanishing much faster than anticipated, and will likely all be gone within the decade - expect new models over the next 18 months to predict some rather radical outcomes entirely within our lifetimes.

<comment><USER43> California is running out of water and has a few years left. Thats imminent. Florida sinking in 50, 100 or 200 years is not. A large percentage of tech folk are highly mobile and as such, florida sinking in even 20 years will not dissuade them from moving here as the vast majority of them are renters anyways. I dont doubt its something to think about and sealevel is definitely rising, I just was contradicting your answer that the one obvious answer is sea level rise. If you put it in percentages of why people move here, I doubt its even in a 5% range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> In the future we will recognize the concept of gentrification as a white-guilt fueled racist sentiment and people will stop using it.

I'm so excited for that day.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well if you are going for the obvious reasons, I guess the insane amount of tech related investment and subsequently generated wealth plays significant role in this but what people quite often forget is the local government. I would recommend everybody to talk to a builder here in SF and get their stories. It is quite eye opening. The local government puts roadblocks to new developments claiming that it would destroy the original look of the city, yet there are areas where this is not an issue. Look around in the business district. On the top of that it plays the different sides against each other, tells to people that the gentrification is purely caused by tech workers. I need to look into Miami more but I guess there is less tech investment and there are no roadblocks against housing projects.

More here: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf- housing/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm a Miami native living in Chicago.

I wonder whether the author only thinks gentrification isn't happening because he doesn't see too many non-Cubans. My understanding is that in the areas he talks about, old buildings are in fact being replaced with high-rise condos left and right.

If almost everyone in Miami is Cuban, then the gentrifiers will also be Cuban.

</comment><comment><USER47> Harvard economist Edward Glaeser; author of the book Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier; has written about this as well as many others such as Economics Nobelist Paul Krugman who cites Glaeser).

The problems with the high rents in today's cities is through the use of politics to artificially increase the value of land through zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status. These laws that increase the cost of land serve as a hidden tax on the poorer segments of society to subsidize the wealthy.

See: NYPost Build Big Bill (de Blasio -- Mayor of NYC) [http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill- article-1....](http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill- article-1.1913739)

</comment><comment><USER48> The primary thesis — that if you just put up a bunch of luxury high-rise apartments in mission bay, gentrification of the mission would stop — strikes me as absurd.

Way overly simplistic. Lots and lots of people with $ in SF still like the not-rich feel of neighborhood like the mission. SF culture doesn't turn into Miami culture just because you put up a bunch of tall buildings.

Other points:

Japantown is nothing more than a mall and a name on a map -- there is no neighborhood there.

Conversely, Chinatown really isn't changing much; it resists gentrification. The explanation I have heard, which seems likely, is that most of the buildings and restaurants have been owned by the same families going way back, and they are reluctant to sell or lease to outsiders.

<comment><USER49> > Chinatown really isn't changing much; it resists gentrification.

That's debatable. The Empress of China, a landmark restaurant of Chinatown since the 60's, closed at the end of last year to make way for offices. A six- floor building with some 62,000 square feet of space inside Chinatown's scant 24 square blocks is no small matter.

<comment><USER48> Aw man, that's going to be offices? That's a bummer :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Here's a concise explanation: SF is close (enough) to East Asia and is a convenient sink for the money laundering / "investment" you can do through real estate.

Similarly, Miami in the 80s was close enough to South America to be an easy sink for the money laundering / "investment" you can do through real estate.

When ~1/3 of new construction is unoccupied & held as investment it sure seems like the driving force at the margin.

[http://www.48hills.org/2015/01/27/sf-planners-yawn-vacant- un...](http://www.48hills.org/2015/01/27/sf-planners-yawn-vacant-units/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I moved from SF to Miami. Its definitely gentrifying, you only need to look at the Wynwood district to see that. Areas where you could have bought a warehouse for next to nothing in the past are now selling for insane amounts, almost like rodeo drive.

The reason why its not gentrifying faster is a combination of two things, demand and sprawl. Unlike SF, we can build up and out. In SF you cant do either, so you are forced to push people out.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think the writer understands what gentrification is, or what the "creative class" looks for in their environment. Brickell's high rises are neither.

The kind of people that gentrify places like SF, or Brooklyn, or a thousand other places around the world apparently aren't there in Miami.

Because they would never want to be found dead in a place like Brickell.

</comment><comment><USER52> Lumping both cities together as "warm-weather" seems lazy. Miami is hotter in January than San Fran ever is.

</comment><comment><USER31> Miami has an abundance of affordable housing alternatives outside the urban core. These are attractive in the same way that Silicon Valley's bedroom communities are except that their affordability makes them even more so. San Francisco is gentrifying because it is the least expensive desirable location.

<comment><USER53> This. The more desirable suburbs of SF (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton) have housing stock that sells for 10-20% more per square foot than housing in prime San Francisco itself. Is there any other major city where this is true?

<comment><USER54> That would depend on your definition of "prime San Francisco". North Beach, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill are the most expensive per sq foot in the bay area. Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights are equivalent to any of the more expensive parts of the peninsula and valley...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> On the east coast here so not at all really familiar with SF's makeup: who exactly are the NIMBYs? What's their demographic makeup? Are they lifelong residents who have 100% dedicated themselves to SF and everything about it (and it's showing due to their municipal political power)?

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands It would probably benefit the author to actually do some research on what they're talking about. While I realize he's going on his own personal experiences, all of the areas around Miami have been undergoing gentrification since at least 2005:

[http://www.floridatrend.com/article/11504/gentrification- fea...](http://www.floridatrend.com/article/11504/gentrification-fears)

 _" But nowhere is the change being felt more than in Overtown. At one time the economic and cultural capital of black Miami, it is now among the nation's poorest neighborhoods. Average income is about $12,000 a year. Crime is rampant in the community of 9,000 that sits in the late-morning shadow of Miami's glittering downtown skyline."_

 _" In the last few months, two major mixed-used developments have been approved in Overtown, the first in decades: Lyric Promenade, a $93-million project that will include a 150-room Hilton Hotel, a blues club, market-rate condominiums and apartments; and Crosswinds, a 1,000-unit condo and apartment project that will include office and retail space. Crosswinds, a for-profit venture on city-owned land, was conceived by the non-profit Collins Center for Public Policy, which asked developers to submit plans that would help revitalize the area."_

and

 _" Much of the new housing will be priced well beyond the reach of most residents of Overtown, where homeownership is barely 10%. In June, tempers boiled over when tenants of a low-income apartment building in Overtown were sent eviction notices shortly after an upscale high-rise developer acquired the property."_

[http://miamitruthandlies.blogspot.com/2011/05/situation- in-o...](http://miamitruthandlies.blogspot.com/2011/05/situation-in- overtown.html)

 _" Overtown is located right in the heart of downtown Miami. Given its deserved reputation as a dangerous, crime-ridden area, Overtown creates a unique situation for the city of Miami. While growing in popularity over the last decade, it cannot be argued that unless Overtown cleans up its act, it will hold back the city in terms of economic development and potential"_

 _" While it does not seem as though this was project was ever meant to actually benefit residents of Overtown, it is important to step back and view the facts without bias. Unfortunately, at this point, with the information available, the future of Overtown looks like one of major disappointment and resentment. Overtown will become home to wealthier residents as new infrastructure continues to be built with little consideration given to the current population."_

<comment><USER31> It's been going on since well before 2005. In the 1980's Miami Beach was a cheap place to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Isn't Miami "sinking", or at least under long-term threat from sea level rise, hurricanes, etc?

<comment><USER57> Both. It's sinking because the water table has dropped. And the sea levels are rising, ever so slightly. But mostly it's going thirsty. The Biscayne aquifer can't keep up with demand. They've paved over it, diverted the rainwater that does fall into the Atlantic and saltwater is contaminating the remaining aquifer.

And the government, rather than plan on fixing it, just keeps putting it off for later generations. They keep referencing the Dutch land reclamations efforts in the past without actually noticing how much work and time (centuries) the Dutch put into blocking out the sea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Francisco _

</comment><comment><USER59> Miami and San Francisco are both warm-weather cities. That's hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER60> Dang, can you fix the spelling in the title please? (FranCisco)

</comment><comment><USER61> The article claims that SF needs an outlet for condo and high rise growth. Isn't SOMA/Mission Bay taking this up?

There are almost certainly larger cultural differences.

</comment><comment><USER62> Many (most?) west coast cities are land locked against ocean, mountains, bays, military posts (San Diego), and other land features. This restricts growth and magnifies shortages of real estate.

Miami has some confinements along it's borders but it's nowhere near as confined as San Fransisco and other west coast cities. This fluff piece is anecdotal and offers no real support of it's conclusions other than the author's loosely defended personal opinion.</comment>


HSBC to shift $20B worth of assets to blockchain-based Digital Vault - sahin-boydas https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/28/hsbc-to-shift-20-billion-worth-of-assets-to-blockchain-based-digital-vault/ <comment><USER2> > a digital ledger that can be instantly and transparently updated.

If it's "instantly" it means PoW is useless, and this thing is just a marketing stunt. Who would have thought.

<comment><USER3> Yes it sounds like they're just using Git ;)

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's like git but access to the repo is defined in the repo itself (using public key cryptography); likely with virtual machine (if it's ethereum, which is likely). There's not much more conceptually there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Working in a bank and seeing what we are doing, I doubt very much they are putting all of their eggs into one basket. It will be replicated on a ledger/chain/vault or whatever you want to call it and they will be still be using their core legacy system.

</comment><comment><USER6> A database to digitize financial details, labeled a "blockchain" so people get more excited about it.

<comment><USER7> A blockchain is a database with virtue.

<comment><USER8> A public blockchain (one where consensus is derived from the masses, or rather an abstraction of the masses like PoW) would have "virtue", but obviously this has yet to be executed perfectly.

<comment><USER7> Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alternative Headline: "One of World's Largest Banks Looks to Upend Financial Model That Generates Them Obscene Profits"

I'm somewhat skeptical they're going all-in or adhering to the vision of the zealots...

</comment><comment><USER10> Zero details on what it actually does with blockchain that couldn't be done more easily, quickly and cheaply with an old-fashioned RDBMS. I'll assume it's just a puff-piece for some "innovation manager" until I see otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Virtually every application of blockchain is better off as an old fashioned RDBMS

<comment><USER12> Except git, of course.

<comment><USER13> Git is a Blockchain? Did I miss a meeting?

<comment><USER14> Sort of. It's a similar cryptographic hash chain type structure. I believe it's a DAG.

Block chain skepticism has gotten as silly as block chain hype. A block chain is a perfectly valid and sometimes useful structure with some very interesting properties, but it won't cure cancer and make a unicorn fly out of every nose.

<comment><USER15> > Block chain skepticism has gotten as silly as block chain hype.

Is it though?

My admittedly simple understanding is that blockchain is a distributed ledger that suffers from consensus based attacks; as in it's pretty much useless unless the cluster is massive and shared between lots of parties that couldn't really out-compute each other.

Thus the criticisms aren't really "this can never work" but simply, this is usually a waste of compute power and energy compared to a non-distributed version, especially when it's one of these singular company examples.

Would be interested in hearing what's the use cases are.

<comment><USER16> > especially when it's one of these singular company examples.

Blockchain is most useful in situations where there is a lack of trust between parties. Seems like a lot of people on HN distrust PayPal because of being bitten by frozen accounts or having their earned money revoked. That's why money is a good use case for blockchain.

Voting is another - maybe you don't trust that your vote for the radical will be counted correctly.

Smart contracts are another. If the other party decides they don't like the current state of affairs (they are losing) then it's much easier and less expensive to have the contract auto-enforced than using a army of law enforcement and lawyers.

If HSBC is actually using this to create an immutable record of transactions that ensures integrity of the logs then it would be a good use case, but I have my doubts.

<comment><USER17> The trust issue is far overblown. Blockchain is much more about digital ownership of assets. You own your Facebook, your Google search results, etc, etc. You may not physically host it, but own the data that is generated from it and can decide to co-opt it into a larger tray for money if you wish or to remain private. It's much more about freedom on a conceptual level if we zoom out then about simple immutable ledgers; which are just shared key-value pair databases across many nodes, nothing special.

<comment><USER16> The immutable ledger and consensus algorithm is the basis for allowing ownership of digital assets and freedom.

Solving the trust issue is what an immutable ledger and consensus algorithm is all about.

Without a way to agree on who owns what and a way to enforce that then there is no way to have digital ownership or freedom without an army of lawyers and law enforcement, or trust.

You probably already have ownership of digital assets without blockchain: it's called a bank account, equities, bonds, and maybe a title or deed to a car or home. But that ownership is all enforced by an entire system of laws, attorneys, law enforcement, and other fallible human beings. If you remove the reliance on that system and fallible human beings, you then begin to enable a greater amount of ownership and freedom than previously possible.

<comment><USER18> "If you remove the reliance on that system and fallible human beings"

If you throw away a crutch, you've removed your reliance on it, indisputably. But that doesn't cure a broken leg.

<comment><USER16> I don't follow your analogy

<comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions)

"Cotten, it turns out, was a serial operator of "exit scams: Ponzis that, after reaching a critical volume, abruptly close up shop." He ran his first pyramid scheme at age 15. Cotten and his partner in Quadriga, Michael Patryn—an alias!—met on a message board for Ponzi schemers, where they bonded by running Ponzi schemes on each other"

<comment><USER16> I'm well aware of the multitude of scams, hacks, etc. involving [centralized] cryptocurrency exchanges, but it doesn't actually have much to do with blockchain technologies itself, at least not in the context being discussed here.

If you give over control to cryptocurrency by sending your cryptocurrency to some entity that exists outside of a trust-less blockchain system (centralized exchange or otherwise) then that entity can do whatever they want with it (technically-speaking), and you are essentially then reverting back to and relying on non-blockchain technologies at that point (The exchange was probably just a typical web app built with some common web framework and RDBMS). Obviously, ponzi schemes are possible without blockchain technologies and in a purely blockchain world, because of the transparency of transactions, it would be very difficult to pull off without having willing-participants.

There is a separate discussion to be had of how to use blockchain with "legacy" centralized systems and how to make it user-friendly for non-experts, but it's not an actual problem with blockchain technologies itself, but more of a second-order problem.

The main thing being discussed was digital assets, so if you have 2 pure digital assets that are compatible with smart contracts, you can exchange without any trust and it prevents things like ponzi schemes. Government money, like in the example, really is more of a "legacy" centralized system, which allows for this. That's partly why you are seeing entities like Coinbase try to create "stable" cryptocurrencies [1] that try to mirror the value of government money.

[1] [https://www.coinbase.com/usdc](https://www.coinbase.com/usdc)

<comment><USER18> "you are essentially then reverting back to and relying on non-blockchain technologies at that point"

Yes, my point is that's not a choice. It's like making the "choice" to fall down after you free yourself from the shackles of the "conventional crutch system".

Clearly this is not an actual problem with walking without crutches - <AUTHOR> of people handle walking that way all the time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fluff to boost their stock price much the same way like "dot com".

</comment><comment><USER20> In other news, HSBC plans to re-brand as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Blockchain Company. [1] _Stock skyrockets_.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp).</comment>


How Apple's Screen Time is outsmarted by kids, frustrating parents - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/15/teens-find-circumventing-apples-parental-controls-is-childs-play/ <comment><USER3> It's not Apple's job to parent your kids, and "smart phone addiction" is an over-hyped fad scare. If someone is super concerned about their teen watching minecraft videos at 2am on vacation, they should take their kid's phone away at night. But also, they're on vacation, and it's not like they're watching porn, so is it even that bad?

This is a bit of an inflammatory comparison, but I stayed up reading with a flashlight a lot as a kid. Was that terrible for me? Should my flashlight have had a setting to limit the times I can use it? Would anyone say I had an unhealthy book addiction, and that publishers should do something about it?

<comment><USER4> You glossed over the most legit complaint raised in the article:

> They search for bugs that make it easy to keep using their phones, unbeknown > to parents, like changing the time to trick the system, or using iMessage to > watch YouTube videos. "These are not rocket science, backdoor, dark web sort > of hacks," says Chris McKenna, founder of the Internet safety group Protect > Young Eyes. "It blows me away that Apple hasn't thought through the fact > that a persistent middle school boy or girl can bang around and find them."

And yeah, it's not that Apple hasn't thought about this or that fixing these kinds of bugs would take more than a day or few to fix.

The issue is Apple only implemented this feature to head off shareholder criticism, not because it believes it. Apple is not incentivized to make its products less addictive.

<comment><USER5> All those problems are solved by taking the phone away. We got a cordless phone when I was a kid (yeah I'm old), and it didn't take long before every night my mom or dad came around and made sure the phone was on the base.

I also played a lot of video games, and if I played more than a couple of hours in a row my dad would come and just unplug the Nintendo. Drove me nuts (saved games on those old cartridges were very finicky), but it made me go outside.

<comment><USER4> See, I agree with this mentality. I would actually respect Apple a lot if they had just come out and told parents to "just take the phone away" rather than launching a half implemented feature and then forgetting about it.

Unfortunately there's no way that would ever happen. Even if Apple PR would ever allow such a statement to be made, which it wouldn't, requiring parents to do some actual parenting might provoke major unrest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In 10 years, we'll read HN comments of how someone started to code after outsmarting Screen Time on their device. These are the type of experiences that give you that thrill of what else could be possible by understanding how technology works.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree. Additionally, I think that breaking some rule is an essential part of growing up and learning. So it's just much better if the rules that a kid aims to break are of this kind and make her/him learn in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Back in 2006 I cofounded a company called IMSafer. My co-founders went on to be S09 class with Y!Combinator.

We grew up as hackers and thought we could end around the problem of kids removing safe guards to our software. What we quickly found was that (surprising no one at all, least of all us) kids have way more time on their hands and are willing to expend way more energy to remove blockers than parents do to enforce them.

It's a tricky issue - kids and online. We actively encouraged parents to have dialog with their kids about what they were doing online. The issue we were attempting to solve was keeping bad people out of the child's social networks. All of the other solutions were, and still do, focus on keeping porn off the computer. That's a doomed system. Parents need to be involved and have a on- going dialog. I believed it when we founded IMSafer 13 years ago, and I believe it now (as a parent with 3 kids, two of them teenagers).

Our service did a lot of very novel things for the time (machine based analysis of chat conversations looking for patterns of predation), but I continue to be amazed at how much energy we put into the "but my kids keep uninstalling it" problem. We came up with some pretty good solutions, which were P95 effective, but (again, surprising no one on the technical team) the kids who figured out how to circumvent came up with some pretty amazing solves.

The most impressive was this one kid who basically took over their parent's account, gave themselves admin access, set their parents to minimal access, but then changed specific .exe file pointers to give the parents the perception that they still had admin access to their machine when they were trying to run applications.

<comment><USER9> "What we quickly found was that (surprising no one at all, least of all us) kids have way more time on their hands and are willing to expend way more energy to remove blockers than parents do to enforce them."

this this this.

limiting screen time isn't a technical issue, it's an economic issue - <USER2> and parents have different levels of effort they're willing to expend to deal with these limits. Ultimately the kid needs to incentivized to conform to the limit set by the parent.

<comment><USER10> An essential truth of parenting is that much of the dynamic between parent and child actually involves the child incentivizing the parent, or at least trying to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I was young my parents installed a system-wide child filter for OS X called Safe Eyes that had tons of false positives (and more importantly, blocked online games). I didn't know much about computers but it drove me to learn how to install and configure Linux so that I could do what I wanted. Kids find a way.

<comment><USER12> My parents tried a similar thing on my system i had built in high school. I immediately reinstalled the os and secured root on all the networking hardware. We remained poised for mutually assured destruction until they dropped it.

<comment><USER13> Was this for content or time? As my kids approach HS age, I can't imagine trying to regulate what media they consume (though the quantity could indeed be a concern).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Never underestimate the genius-level ability of children to get around restrictions imposed by parents, teachers, or anyone else.

Come to think of it, I have even played a video game about it, called "Mom hid my game!"

I salute their ingenuity as a triumph of the human spirit in its unstoppable quest for freedom, justice, and Minecraft for all. Though I suppose drug addicts are similarly clever...

<comment><USER15> It's just the hacker spirit. All kids have it, many people who muck about with computers a lot have it. Many people with little respect for "the system" have it too; that includes drug addicts, but also rednecks (redneck engineering) and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Brings back memories of getting around various iterations of useless parental control software on the family computer back in the day. And even before that, picking the lock on the TV cabinet to get to the Nintendo.

Technology changes, kids don't.

</comment><comment><USER17> breaking news on 'hacker news'

rules are meant to be broken

\- every kid with enough determination in the history of mankind

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh look. A general purpose computer is being used to do general purpose computer things.

Interestingly, corporations have more ways to restrict device usage than parents, by adding a profile and changing the device to 'supervised'.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://outline.com/hVy68n](https://outline.com/hVy68n)

[http://archive.is/RlUdP](http://archive.is/RlUdP)

<comment> _-_T_-_ HN users find circumventing WaPo paywall is child's play

<comment><USER19> How? The usual tricks don't work for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A story from a high-tech HS in SoCal:

School has wifi with content blocking, and many students BYOD. Teachers can override the content blocker on a one-time basis by typing in an override password on a student's device.

So a student puts a keylogger on his own device, navigates to a page that he should be allowed to access, but which the content blocker flags, and he gets the teacher to enter the override password. Thanks to the keylogger, now he has it too. Kids are sneaky!

</comment><comment><USER21> Thought: Is there a way a parent can turn the phone into a "basic" mode between times of X and Y?

EG: At 11PM, the phone goes into basic mode. It can only call the list of pre- defined numbers (parents/family) and emergency services.

Maybe give a 30 15 and 5 minute count-down warning that way the user can gracefully finish their activities currently at hand.

<comment><USER22> "Downtime" comes close. [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208982](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982):

 _"Think of this as a nap for your screen time. When you schedule downtime in Settings, only phone calls and apps that you choose to allow are available. Downtime applies to all of your Screen Time-enabled devices, and you get a reminder five minutes before it starts."_

I don't think you can restrict what numbers can be called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is ultimately a futile effort. The only value in implementing content blockers or usage restrictions would be to encourage computer proficiency in circumventing and defeating them. You can't outwit a bored thirteen year-old over any appreciable time scale.

</comment><comment><USER24> Haha, man, parents have had all these limitations imposed since ages and so many of us learned to be what we are by dodging those limitations.

Funny, I told myself I'd be more open when I was an adult and here we all are, doing the same thing.

<comment><USER25> Sometimes I feel like the process of growing up, and in particular of becoming a parent, is a process of learning my parents were mostly right all along.

<comment><USER17> time is a flat circle

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's peculiar about this is that parental restrictions itself on iOS has always been flawed, Apple knew about it, and it's still an issue to this day. The sole purpose of parental restrictions on iPhone was to block adult websites... and that worked as well as you can imagine: [https://www.jonbottarini.com/2017/03/09/bypassing-apples- ios...](https://www.jonbottarini.com/2017/03/09/bypassing-apples- ios-10-restrictions-settings-twice/)

</comment><comment><USER27> There's a really easy solution here: just use a device with a super shitty battery and only charge it once a day. Then, hide the cable.

Now there's an incentive for them to learn electrical engineering.

</comment><comment><USER28> When our kid's ipod reaches its time limit, up comes an "ignore" button. Yes, thanks Apple. /s</comment>


The craftsman in us all - <AUTHOR> http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2250725,00.html

<comment><USER2> Cool. This has come at a good time for me. I've been working on a problem where I've been going down quite a few dead ends. Conceptually the problem shouldn't be that hard to solve, so I've been berating my self a bit about failing to hit on the solution correctly the first time.

So where the article mentions: "To arrive at that goal, the craftsman at work has instead to dwell in waste, following up dead ends". That perfectly describes how it feels to struggle through this problem, with code strewn around and thrown away in different approaches.

<comment><AUTHOR> Build one to throw away as it were

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While I was struggling making my first (and so far, last) piece of furniture, I got some sage advice. The woodworker said, "Woodworking is about problem solving. There is no right or wrong. Only smarter, faster, and safer. It doesn't matter how you do it, as long as it looks nice."

He added, "Do you think the true masters of furniture making don't make mistakes? They do. They shim stuff up. You think everything's perfect, but it's not. You can't even tell." It's ok and part of the process to make mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER4> The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne \--Geoffrey Chaucer

<comment><USER4> The craftsman style in archtitecture has seen a tremendous resurgance in popularity since the late 90s. People seem to more and more value the attention to detail and appreciation for natural materials.

Small home arts & crafts are increasingly more popular (did you know scrapbooking is a >$3 billion industry in the US?). Look at the popularity of Etsy.com: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124684>

I feel like society is going in 2 directions. One the hand, people are willing to accept low/lower quality in items/services, in particular if they're being made free. But also the availablity of information in the form of online instruction and tutorials is reducing the barriers of entry for many individuals, sparking their interest in hand-made high-quality items.

Other than saying I agree with this article, I don't really have a point here, just voicing some thoughts I've been pondering quite a bit in the last couple months.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin is Crashing - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/20/bitcoin-crashing/

<comment><USER2> No, it's not. The Mt. Gox price is disconnected entirely from other exchanges due to the inability to withdrawal either Bitcoin or dollars, and the uncertainty over MtGox's solvency.

People on MtGox are effectively trading GoxDollars for GoxCoins. Someone setup [https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/](https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/) to trade GoxCoins for Bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER3> A classic trick -- expand the range of the graph to make the situation look more dire than it is. The news isn't great, but the way it's presented creates a false impression.</comment>


White House Silence Seems to Confirm $4B CS for All K-12 Initiative Is No More - <AUTHOR> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/12/06/0137211/white-house-silence-seems-to-confirm-4-billion-computer-science-for-all-k-12-initiative-is-no-more <comment><USER2> I wish we had an easy way to ask the moderators if this is political for purposes of the weeklong political detox.

<comment><USER3> I think that this is not "political" because it is mostly about specific policy.</comment></comment>


QuadrigaCX death debacle gets even weirder - <AUTHOR> https://micky.com.au/quadrigacx-death-debacle-gets-even-weirder/ <comment><USER2> Is there a body to go with this death?</comment>


Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/daniel-ellsberg-edward-snowden-and-the-modern-whistleblower <comment><USER2> Gladwell's biggest omission is the stories of Thomas Drake and William Binney. Two predecessors that Snowden was well aware of, who tried to be, as Gladwell puts it "leakers as insiders". They were systematically shut down, and Snowden learned that was no longer an option for him, so he became a "leaker as outsider".

The nature and style of Snowden's whistleblowing is not because he loves the hacker-chic style. It's because the CIA and NSA proved they were perfectly capable of covering up the most damaging "insider" whistleblowers and he still thought this information was worth releasing to the public.

<comment><USER3> While I agree that Drake and Binney were "leakers as insiders", I do not agree that this impacts the narrative of the article. Snowden wasn't an NSA outsider because he didn't want to be an insider. He was an NSA outsider _because he was an NSA outsider_ \--- his attempts to be an insider failed.

Moreover, there's more to the point Gladwell is making than that Snowden wasn't an insider. The core point of the piece is that Ellsberg's insider status enabled him to leak carefully, and to redact strategically. Snowden demonstrably did not do this: not only did things get published that weren't in the American public interest, but other things that were (for instance: traces of the Juniper/Netscreen backdoor, or implants in other VPN products) were never published.

It's not just that Snowden wasn't an insider, but that he lacked the ability to leak carefully and strategically --- and so the public outcome was inferior to the Pentagon Papers.

<comment><USER4> > It's not just that Snowden wasn't an insider, but that he lacked the ability > to leak carefully and strategically --- and so the public outcome was > inferior to the Pentagon Papers.

This is hard to believe. I find it much more likely that Snowden had a broad agenda he wanted to cover, and simply decided to delegate the work of sifting through documents relevant to the public interest to journalists. How successful this strategy was is another issue entirely.

Also, the direct comparison between the material Ellsberg had to work with and what Snowden had is misleading. Ellsberg leaked a study from RAND literally designed to assess and document the history of the Vietnam War, including past failures. It's easy to look at that and go, "Wow, this is a careful, strategic disclosure." But Ellsberg couldn't have had an easier choice about what to leak!

In contrast, Snowden had access to a much more disparate set of documents that required lots of interpretation and technical parsing on journalists' part. There wasn't a single PowerPoint presentation that summed up NSA's abuses so conveniently.

That doesn't necessarily justify scraping as much as possible and passing it over to journos, but we have to keep the two men's access to material in context.

<comment><USER3> Can you be more specific about what exactly it is you find hard to believe, what you believe instead, and what evidence could be presented to you to change your belief?

<comment><USER4> The notion that he "lacked the ability to leak carefully and strategically" because he was an outsider. I'm fairly sure he was more than capable of selecting only documents related to domestic surveillance if he wanted to -- that just wasn't his broader goal. However, I would definitely appreciate the argument that his status as an outsider rendered him _opposed_ to the idea of leaking selectively. I think the author hinted at this when he contrasted "hackers" and "leakers", but it's still quite different from what you're saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why should we take Gladwell seriously on this? Why does anyone think he is qualified? He is a windbag famous for writing the most base and insulting form of literary clickbait: pop science novels that tell a series of 'just so' fables which add up to give the reader a satisfying sense of the world which is completely opposed to the world the way it is. He is a propaganda artist at best, insidious at least.

And now he writes on Snowden, omits hugely important pieces of the story, warps the narrative in service of his hip contrarianism and unsurprisingly misses the point completely but distracts with cute anecdotes about Ellsberg.

I guess the question we should be asking ourselves is why is he given a spot to write a long-form article like this in the New Yorker? Why does anyone still take him seriously at this point? Has intellectualism in this country truly failed this hard?

Perhaps a good thing could come from this: people who have done their due diligence and read about Snowden will read this and recognize Gladwell for the hack he is.

<comment><USER3> Could you be more specific about how he's "warped the narrative" in this piece? I feel like I've done my due diligence on this topic and I felt like it was both well written and made a pretty compelling point.

Further, the places where Gladwell departs from the message board orthodoxy on Snowden aren't at all out of step with what other reporters who covered him had to say. For instance: read Fred Kaplan's review of the Snowden movie, which recaps many of the points Gladwell made here, but is far more acidic.

<comment><USER6> To give an example, Gladwell cherry-picks quotes to misrepresent Snowden's views in this piece. The strong stench of elitism and intellectual dishonesty in insinuating that Snowden is a fool because he claims that non-governmental institutions have important roles to play in solving social problems is typical, and I would venture to speculate that Gladwell would _never_ say the same thing about someone like Larry Lessig (who has actually spoken with Snowden), even though they happen to hold similar views on those topics, particularly in relation to the examples Snowden gave in the quote.

Gladwell's process serves well enough as a lazy caricature for the piece but doesn't represent a good-faith articulation of his subject's views, which is hard to excuse in light of the dozens of events, thousands of tweets, etc. that are much more accessible than Ellsberg material was decades ago.

Gladwell could have interviewed Snowden and Ellsberg but probably chose not to, perhaps because it was easier to trash-talk someone whose life is under threat at an especially sensitive time (pardon consideration) for a "clever" contrast with Ellsberg than to try to represent his perspective in good faith.

<comment><USER3> Which quotes are cherry picked? How is Snowden's view misrepresented? Is it your argument that Snowden has a greater respect for governing institutions (conceptual or in reality) than the piece represents?

Long before this piece was published, I had the impression of Snowden as a sort of technocratic an-cap type.

I will confess to not being the slightest bit interested in what Ellsberg thinks of Snowden, and far more interested in what people report about Ellsberg and Snowden than what either of them think of each other.

<comment><USER6> Mostly the far-from-charitable interpretation of "When we talk about saving lives, when we are talking about fighting cancer, treating AIDS, ameliorating poverty, these solutions typically are not coming from government. . . . While law is important . . . at the end of the day law is simply letters on a page."

My argument was that Gladwell is painting a cheap caricature of a "hacker" when it's both easy and reasonable to interpret a quote like the one above in the broader context of the full speech/event and the dozens of others that he's given in recent years.

I'm not trying to argue that Snowden has or doesn't have respect for governing institutions. I think that's Snowden's story to tell. But my read of the piece is that Gladwell reached some "clever" sounding conclusion - perhaps in a "blink" \- and then found a quote that supported his narrative, which reads more like Harvard-worship in Ellsberg's favor than careful presentation of arguments/evidence. This strikes me as misleading and dishonest in light of the sheer volume of interviews, tweets, etc. from Snowden that (at least to me) paint a more nuanced and careful picture.

<comment><USER3> I can understand bristling at the association of technophilic anarcho- capitalism with the word "hacker", but I'm less convinced by the argument that mere invocation of the concept of technophilic anarcho-capitalism is out of bounds, because it is clearly "a thing" in our community.

<comment><USER6> Invoking the concept isn't out of bounds, but having watched a decent number of presentations, talks, and interviews by/about this particular person, the lack of nuance in describing someone whose views seem especially easy to find was frustrating and likely deliberate. It took me all of five seconds to find Snowden's last tweet on the particular argument Gladwell references, which was about a week ago (bold font): [https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/805868198138703873](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/805868198138703873)

Gladwell's uninformed gee-whiz speculation seems like an excuse to parrot the claim that Snowden "may have been the dupe of a foreign-intelligence service" without mentioning any evidence or even a clear argument beyond its appearance in a book. Maybe Snowden was that or worse, but the only argument Gladwell seems to construct to support the claim is that he was a dupe/fool because he didn't go Harvard like Ellsberg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For comparison, this is Daniel Ellsberg's view on Edward Snowden: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg- nsa-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker- snowden-made-the-right- call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html)

<comment><USER8> A quote from that piece:

 _Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden's leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts._

<comment><USER9> Ellsberg's view of Snowden is Gladwell's biggest omission. It's hard to believe that Gladwell researched Ellsberg without coming across this or other similar statements. I therefore assume Gladwell omitted this view on purpose, because it messes with the noble, Harvard grad leaking based on Game Theory, versus the CC dropout lamer hacker doxxing the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This story oozes elitism. It's also rife with misinformation and misleading tangents. The claim that various government organizations are solely responsible for AIDS elimination and cancer research is ridiculous. How many NGOs research these things? How many private industries? Then to follow that up with the idea that taxpayers foot the bill for the NIH so why not foot the bill for the NSA??? I just don't follow this reasoning.

<comment><USER11> Does Gladwell really not remember how hard it was to get the US executive branch to take AIDS seriously?

[http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s- AID...](http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s-AIDS-Legacy- Silence-equals-death-2751030.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was astounded at how classist and elitist Gladwell comes across in the article. His point is essentially, because Snowden didn't have a PhD and didn't talk to the right people, the civic value of his leaks are mute.

The difference in Ellsberg's leak and Snowden is that Ellsberg had support within the government (the military) for the public knowing the truth. I'd argue that the difference with Snowden's leaks is that they were inherently against the state and in defense of the constitution. Because the leaks were solely in the interest of citizens, and not the political elite, is the reason he drew the ire of the state.

</comment><comment><USER13> A sizable share of this looks like namecalling and misinformation.

<comment><USER14> Mind pointing out specifics of what is "namecalling and misinformation"?

<comment><USER15> Not the OP, but I would presume they're referring to things a few other commenters have already complained about, e.g. as justcommenting wrote:

"Both were imperfect people in unique situations, but Gladwell's distinction seems to boil down to "Harvard, game theory, & Nobel prize winning PhD advisor" in the case of Ellsberg vs. "community-college dropout" in the case of Snowden, followed by Gladwell falling over himself to redefine "insider" right after spelling it out in detail with the language of class, prestige, and societal privilege."

Or there's the omission that tanderson92 pointed out:

"Gladwell is intentionally deceptive when he refers to Snowden "washing out" of the Reserves. In fact he was discharged after breaking both legs in a training accident. You can debate whether that technically qualifies as washing out or not, but it's quite another to lump that in with the rest of the paragraph and let the reader fill in their own opinions of the events. But perhaps that's the entire point, and part of the reason Gladwell was chosen for this piece.

Eliding certain facts can leave the reader with a distinctly non-factual impression of the man."

[http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-army- di...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-army- discharge-092486)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe Leaker 2.0 is inferior to 1.0. It perhaps parallels America 2.0 (indefinite detention without trial, torture, and maybe a few other crimes against humanity) being a bit inferior to America 1.0.

<comment><USER17> I was never a great history student but I am certain America 1.0 isn't as rosey as you paint it. I can think of genocide of indigenous people, slavery, increased use of capital punishment and mob justice tactics like tarring and feathering just off the top of my head depending on when you draw the line.

I imagine the kinds of things you listed are only coming to light now. I can't see what's unique about the people in power now that makes it likely they are the first acting like this, with maybe the exception of surveillance. I think the earlier American government had less problems keeping these activities secret.

However, despite that cynicism that doesn't mean Americans shouldn't fight for those improvements too!

<comment><USER18> They are the first ones to institutionalize these actions. At what point, for example, did a President of this nation adopt torture as a legitimate tool of the state? Sure, people have been tortured in US for ages, but it was not official policy.

That is the difference.

<comment><USER19> "Some people are property" was the law of the land and you could do whatever you wanted with your property. And that's just for starters. The notion that some fundamental break occurred at 'enhanced interrogation' is ahistorical.

<comment><USER20> "Some people are property", as abhorrent as it is, is markedly different from "all people are property".

<comment><USER19> There is certainly a difference between actual chattel slavery and a glib bit of hyperbolic political sloganeering.

<comment><USER20> While you downplay my mention as "political sloganeering", it's a core assumption of contemporary political philosophy. A specific designation ("chattel") is only required for distinguishing between different classes of people, when only one class is treated as property. Totalitarianism implicitly asserts all people are its to control, and thus needs no formal designation.

<comment><USER19> Strike as non-responsive?

<comment><USER20> That seems more applicable to your first response to me. My exact point was that there is a difference (your labeling my phrasing as "political sloganeering" notwithstanding).

It only makes sense to compare current society with historic oppression if you also equate us all with that oppressed class (eg the unoppressed class is what has vanished).

I'm not saying you can't find further examples of historic government overreach against the _citizenry_ , it's just that slavery is not one of them.

edit: Actually scratch that, I see that the comparison was actually being made with torture, which is generally about non-citizens (I hope?).

I was addressing the larger topic of societal surveillance, and that to me seems like a definite new phenomenon rather than something comparable to past oppression. Although I'd say it's been created by technological change rather than political change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> a long and bloviating article, complaining essentially that hackers refuse to wear ties, and that they really should wear ties because the computer engineers of the old days wore ties.

instead of "ties" we're talking about niceties regarding whistleblower behaviors regarding leaks.

my response: the public is kept in the dark intentionally by malicious actors who run their country; leaking is an ethical path to disrupt those malicious actors.

<comment><USER22> Targeted leaking can be justified. Indiscriminately stealing information can not be. I think that's a better summary of the article. Now, there are a lot of subtleties to this, especially in regards to what Snowden actually did. But I don't think it's fair to boil down the article's premise to "hating on hackers."

Your response actually agrees with the author. I don't think the author would deny that leaking can be and is a necessary part of a free society.

<comment><USER23> You're using biased language. Rephrasing your point to: "Targeted stealing can be justified. Indiscriminate stealing can not be." or perhaps "Targeted leaking can be justified. Indiscriminate leaking can not be".

I think you are missing a point though. Who is best placed to judge what to release? The leaker, or experienced journalists? What if you know there are more abuses but don't have time to individually search through the documents before leaking? Should you only take the ones you have already read, and lose out on revealing other abuses? It's a difficult choice.

From my outside point of view, the government (and often media) errs too much on the side of secrecy so I'm glad to see a whistleblower who is more aggressive with the amount of information they leak.

<comment><USER22> I was summarizing the article, that's why I chose that language because it reflected my interpretation of what the author was saying.

But I think a more balanced approach is necessary. The leaker should have at least some knowledge of what they are providing to journalists. This was somewhat addressed in the article because the author seemed to feel that Snowden was opening himself up to attack precisely because he was so indiscriminate. He put a target on his back from not just the US government but also foreign governments who want the information he has.

<comment><USER24> It doesn't work the other way. If you take only a few documents they simply lie their way through those few leaks and continue on. You need the bulk of the Snowden leaks, and the ability to continually show the government to be lying, to even start the conversation.

As for what's justified, there's no justification for _not_ reporting crimes. There's no difficulty bar where you get to relax even though nothing has changed. You have a legal obligation to report illegal acts and orders even if it's uncomfortable. If the government wants to deter leakers it should start listening to their initial complaints, before these loyal Americans feel the need to go public.

> a more balanced approach is necessary.

Right, when crimes are revealed more of the administration need to go to jail. Hell, it's the military and some should probably be hung for their crimes. As long as the whistleblower is the only one suffering we can be sure the system is failing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Gladwell has written a predictable hatchet job of a perceived libertarian hero. Surprised that it was him, not surprised it was done in the NY-anything.

More interesting question is: if one were going to orchestrate a pseudo- intellectual takedown of the forces of popular discontent, who would one go after next?</comment>


Siamese Network on MNIST Dataset - <AUTHOR> https://leimao.github.io/article/Siamese-Network-MNIST/ <comment><USER2> How does this qualify as semi-supervised? Labels are being passed in for all data points during training—isn't that full supervision? [https://github.com/leimao/Siamese_Network_MNIST/blob/master/...](https://github.com/leimao/Siamese_Network_MNIST/blob/master/siamese_run.py#L12)

<comment><USER3> They don't pass the actual label, the pass two images and a 0/1 valued boolean "Are these images in the same class?"</comment></comment>


Final Year Project Dilemma - <AUTHOR> I've been racking my brain for months trying to solidify an idea for my final year project, though can't seem to nail one that will be worthwhile in terms of how it will look on my resume and my grade.<p>I've looked at doing a project with open government data but the data tends to be past data which only covers a certain time period and I don't want my project to just regurgitate information in a different way. I've looked at maybe doing an AI project such as speech recognition or some Bot with Wit AI but this seems to have been done many times before. It seems every project I think about has been done, I'm dreading having to resort to doing a simple website. I would rather create a unique project or project that helps people in some way e.g. with mental health etc. Any ideas guys. I'm sick of flip flopping ideas, I need to start working on a project. <comment><USER2> Can you drop me an email or put an email in your profile? I've got two challenging (but achievable within a few weeks) project ideas that might interest you (and which we would most likely use at our company if it existed).

</comment><comment><USER3> Use AI to find ideas for final year projects

<comment><AUTHOR> This idea cracked me up, keep them coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use AI to detect and help for mental health?</comment>


Cool Crowdfunding: Wooden Globes, Expressive Robots, and Learning - <AUTHOR> https://makezine.com/2019/02/15/cool-crowdfunding-wooden-globes-expressive-robots-and-learning/ <comment><AUTHOR> There is amazing projects as below:

GoodWood Globes

STEMpedia: A learning kit that can help teach kids about robotics, coding, electronics [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stempedia-young- innovator...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stempedia-young-innovator-s- paradise#/)

Peeqo: communicating entirely through animated gifs

Picoh Make your Picoh talk

Valpat Steam</comment>